The Texas Observer

Texas scientists have finally stopped agonizing over creationism and gotten busy organizing.

Today, a group of university professors announced in a press conference the 21st Century Science Coalition, a vehicle to promote science education in Texas and push back against the retrograde agenda at the State Board of Education. It’s about time. The obscure but powerful board is a known hotbed of pseudo-scientific activity. At least six of its 15 members, including Chairman Don McLeroy, are creationists who have done little to hide their contempt for evolutionary biology. With an overhaul of the state’s science curriculum underway, this religious right faction has an opportunity to leave its fingerprints all over biology textbooks.

That’s where the scientists, mostly biologists, come in. Dr. David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology at UT-Austin, came out firing at the press conference:

[McLeroy] is on record stating that there are two kinds of science: one that uses natural explanations, and one that relies on supernatural explanations. He is dead wrong about this: supernatural explanations have no place in science classrooms. Science is about testable explanations, and supernatural explanations are by their very nature untestable. It is clear that Chairman McLeroy wants to promote a particular religious, rather than a scientific, agenda in our science classrooms, and that has stimulated our group of over 800 Texas scientists to object.

The speakers made the usual — but necessary — statements that evolution is undisputed among the vast majority of scientists. To illustrate the point to a media that sometimes sacrifices accuracy for balance (”on one hand… but on the other”), the organizers piled up 10 years’ worth of the journal Evolution. Altogether, there are some 100,000 peer-reviewed articles supporting evolution published in this journal and others, said Dr. Dan Bolnick, an assistant professor at UT-Austin. “Not a single one shows that evolution has not occurred,” Bolnick said.

Dr. Richard Duhrkopf, who teaches — God bless him — biology at Baylor, had the best zinger of the day: “It’s time to keep religion and faith in the Sunday schools and not in the public schools.”

The coalition’s first goal is to strip language from the state’s standards that calls for the teaching of “strengths and weaknesses” in scientific theories. A committee of teachers has already recommended removing the language, but the board will make the final decision. McLeroytold the Austin American-Statesman that he wanted to maintain the status quo.

“Evolution shouldn’t have anything to worry about — if there’s no weaknesses, there’s no weaknesses. But if there’s scientifically testable explanations out there to refute it, shouldn’t those be included too?”

That argument is the new hobbyhorse of the creationist crowd. Having failed to get Intelligent Design into the classroom, the intellects of the creationist movement are pushing the “strengths and weaknesses” line. It’s a wedge to introduce creationist thinking into the classroom, says Dr. Sahotra Sarkar, a UT professor and founding member of the coalition. “What they’re trying to do is put in some completely phony doubts about what constitutes evolution,” said Sarkar.

This semester Sarkar is teaching a class to freshmen that touches on creationism. Of his 18 students, three of them claim to never have been taught a thing in high school about evolution, Sarkar says, even though it’s required by the state.

As the Senate’s proposed $700 billion bailout bill goes thudding down to ignominious defeat—an hour after John McCain rushed to claim credit for its success—it’s worth remembering another vote, in another time, that just may have helped get us where we are today.

On September 23, Jay Bookman from the Atlanta Journal Constitution reprinted a Molly Ivins column on the 10th anniversary of its original publication. In it, Ivins argues that proposed deregulation of the banking industry is going to lead to “financial disaster.”

Watching Washington Mutual and Wachovia’s catastrophic collapses, it’s easy to forget that way back, oh, about 10 years ago, things seemed pretty good. The economy was going through one of the biggest booms in our history. People had savings accounts. Students could get loans. Major banks weren’t failing. And the Senate met to vote on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a proposal to, in Ivins’ synopsis, “eliminate barriers between banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies.”

Her critique is worth quoting at some length. “This sets up financial holding companies that offer all three types of services simultaneously. The most obvious risk is that a blunder in the insurance or brokerage end of the business could bring down a bank, putting insured deposits at risk. The taxpayers, of course, then wind up with the tab, as we did with the savings-and-loan mess.

“So what we have here is (1) increasing likelihood of a recession dead ahead, (2) banks already looking at serious trouble because of stupid lending policies, and (3) a bill that effectively further deregulates the banks and hurts consumers, making it even more likely that banks will get themselves into serious trouble . . . Veto, veto, veto.”

Almost a year after that column, as the bill went to a vote in the House, U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan, and now chairman of the Commerce Committee) stood before the House to warn that the act would create “a group of institutions which are too big to fail.

“Not only are they going to be big banks, they are going to be big everything, because the are going to be in securities and insurance, in issuance of stocks and bonds and underwriting, and they are also going to be in banks . . . Taxpayers are going to be called upon to cure the failures we are creating tonight, and it is going to cost a lot of money, and it is coming. Just be prepared for those events.”

Nine days later, on November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), co-sponsor of the act, was there to claim credit.

“The world changes,” he said, “and Congress and the laws have to change with it. We have learned that government in not the answer. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.”

He added, “I believe that this is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been part of making it a reality.”

Even with Congress embroiled in the country’s financial meltdown this week, the Department of Homeland Security managed to get its $400 million to keep building the border wall.

This week, the department also awarded three contractors $37 million in contracts to build border fence in Cameron County. The three companies chosen were the Texas-based Jaco Construction, Colorado-based MCC Construction and the Omaha-based Kiewit Corp.

Now the question is: when might construction begin? And can DHS build a fence on property whose owners have filed lawsuits against the department? As is its custom, the department didn’t respond to emails from the Observer seeking comment.

A phone call to Peter Schey, the lawyer representing Dr. Eloisa Tamez and the Benavidez Family in El Calaboz, helped answer some of the questions. Schey said that DHS could not build on his clients properties because they had filed a formal discovery document in federal court in Brownsville in early September.

In layman’s terms, this means that Schey has asked Homeland Security to specifically explain to Dr. Tamez and the Benavidez Family what the department plans to do with their property. He’s also asked the court not to act until DHS responds. The agency has until October 5th to respond to the court on what it plans to do regarding Schey’s filing.

To date, Homeland Security has never specifically explained to landowners what it has in store for their land. Or whether the department could alter their properties in the future. The agency has also never explained how it came up with the monetary amounts it’s offering for landowners’ properties.

“Property owners are blindfolded. DHS won’t tell them the rules of negotiation and won’t tell them the extent of the use of the land. Are they going to build one road or two roads? Are they going to put in guard towers with machine guns? Landowners have no idea,” Schey said.

Schey said he had no doubt that the department had properties where it could start building.

He said that DHS’ negotiations were built on a foundation of lawlessness. “All these agreements they got, DHS never told landowners they had the right to negotiate a reasonable price under the law,” he said. “Most people are unaware of their rights.”

He also said that in most pending cases, judges haven’t issued orders that would prevent DHS from building. Schey said he plans to share his motion for discovery with other lawyers representing landowners in court. “To my knowledge I am the first one to do this,” he said.

Schey’s client, Dr. Eloisa Tamez will be honored in Austin on October 3rd by the Texas Civil Rights Project for her courage in fighting the building of a border wall through her community. In 2007, Tamez was the first landowner to stand up to the plan to build an 18-foot wall through her backyard.

It also appears that Congress may have put in some hurdles to building the border wall. In the spending package passed by the House, U.S. Customs and Border Protection received $775 million to spend on fencing. The text of the spending package, however, requires Chertoff to consult with communities , federal agencies and other stakeholders before building. It also requires the agency to seek approval by congressional committees and a review by the Government Accountabilty Office before it can spend its $400 million on the border wall.

It would seem that DHS has its own wall to overcome before it can start building one in Brownsville. Of course, these days anything can happen. But given these new hurdles, it seems the border wall issue will be left for the next president to resolve.

The Texas Observer has named as its editor Bob Moser, writer and editor for The Nation, former editor of North Carolina’s Independent Weekly, and author of Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority.

Moser succeeds former executive editor Jake Bernstein, now a reporter for ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news organization in New York, N.Y., at the helm of the biweekly magazine.

Past editors of the Observer, based in Austin and published by the non-profit Texas Democracy Foundation, include such nationally acclaimed journalists as Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, Robert Sherrill, Molly Ivins and Geoffrey Rips. The winner of countless awards for its investigative reporting since its founding in 1954, the Observer was named America’s best political magazine by the Utne Reader in 2005.

“For more than fifty years, the Observer has set the standard for hard-hitting, well-crafted alternative journalism in print,” Moser said. “Our challenge now is to set a new standard for alternative journalism in the digital age.” The magazine will be stepping up its online efforts, Moser said, along with recruiting and training new reporters reflective of Texas’ fast-changing culture, politics and demographics.

“There is no place in the country evolving more rapidly, or changing more fundamentally, than Texas,” Moser said. “The Observer will aim to deploy our tough, thorough, hard-nosed reporting to nudge the state in a progressive direction. We’ll be keeping the ascendent Democrats honest, just as we’ve been relentless in exposing the corruption and incompetence of Republican leadership in the state.”

Moser cut his journalistic teeth as editor of North Carolina’s Independent Weekly, a National Magazine Award-winning alternative paper modeled on the original Observer. After leaving The Independent in 2000, Moser was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University during the 2000-2001 academic year.

From 2001 to 2004, he was an award-winning senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, reporting on American extremists, particularly the religious right and the anti-immigrant movement. He has freelanced for national publications including Rolling Stone, where he won the 2006 GLAAD Award for best magazine article.

Moser’s first book, Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority, was published in August by Times Books. Since 2005, he has been writing and editing for The Nation magazine, where he is finishing a campaign-long series, “Purple America,” on the evolving politics of “red” states including Texas.

The Observer’s top-notch border coverage has been the best in the nation, even revealing for the first time that the border wall cuts through family homes and university lands, but stops just short of golf courses and resort developments. The magazine exposed Tom DeLay’s shenanigans and Governor Perry’s secret database and was first to report that Senator Phil Gramm, GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s chief economic advisor, is largely responsible for the nation’s current economic crisis. And it broke the stories about sexual abuse in Texas Youth Commission facilities, as well as the bogus undercover drug busts in Tulia, Texas, that sent innocent citizens to prison.

In November 2007, I wrote a story entitled “That Sinking Feeling: The Water’s Rising. The Island’s Subsiding. And Galveston Keeps on Building.” The story - and the headline - tried to capture the folly of building on a vulnerable barrier island.

Despite increasingly stern warnings from scientists and the protestations of environmentalists, Galveston’s unprotected West End is exploding with development. Developers are building homes and hotels on beaches expected to erode within decades. In some cases, geologists say, the builders are disrupting the very integrity of the island, carving away the land for canals, marinas, and ponds. Such excavation could enhance the potential for breaches of the island during storms by creating pathways for water. In an extreme case, Galveston could even be split into multiple pieces, the geologists warn.

The scenario does not faze many islanders. An abiding faith in the power of engineering and technology has reassured them that the forces of nature an be resisted. So they build in the face of a looming disaster.

The disaster is no longer looming. The slow-motion phenomena I described in the story have suddenly been brought to the fore. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram aptly summed it up yesterday: “The devastating hit that Hurricane Ike delivered to the upper Texas coast has many experts questioning the breakneck pace of development along the beaches.” But it’s not just the experts. Read the comments section of any story about rebuilding the West End. On one side you have folks, admirably undefeated by the storm, promising to rebuild at any cost. On the other, you have people calling for a halt to the endless proliferation of tony condos and beachside mansions built within spitting distance of the Gulf and outside the protection of the seawall.

Scientists and residents are beginning to assess the damage to the West End. John Anderson, a professor of oceanography at Rice and critic of unchecked Galveston development, shared some of his preliminary observations. The West End, Anderson observes, for the most part “dodged a bullet.” The storm surge was less than anticipated and Bolivar bore the brunt of the “dirty side” of the hurricane. Though the precise extent won’t be known for some time, Anderson says there appears to be significant beach erosion, leaving many homes stranded on the public beaches. (Land commissioner Jerry Patterson reports “hundreds” of houses.)

“Some of those houses that were built months or a year ago are now sitting seaward of the vegetation line,” Anderson said. “That’s just really deplorable.” Anderson has reason to be miffed. He was one of the authors of a 2007 “geohazards” study commissioned by the city that challenged city leaders to steer development away from sensitive areas - eroding beaches, wetlands, and low-lying areas.

The study was effectively shelved. Development continued apace.

In my story lat year, I wrote about a $500 million master-planned community called Pointe West built on probably the most vulnerable part of the island, next to San Luis Pass on the far western tip. Here was one geologists’ prediction of Pointe West’s fate:

“[Pointe West] will be run over by a hurricane someday and totally flattened, and if that doesn’t happen, there will be a shift in shoreline movement, and some of those places will be in danger of falling into the ocean,” says Jim Gibeaut, a research professor at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and the lead author of the geohazards map.

So how did Pointe West fare? Most of the very pricey homes seem to have survived Ike. But some of the almost brand-new beachside houses appear to be perilously close to the public beach, if not on it. See these before and after shots.

Closer to the seawall, the beaches appear to have encroached even more.

“I hate to say I told you so but sometimes you have to so people take you seriously,” Anderson says.

Another big I-told-you-so: Last October, land commissioner Jerry Patterson stood at the end of the seawall and announced the “biggest effort to preserve the Texas coast since the Galveston Seawall” — $13.5 million to nourish three miles of beach west of the seawall. The project was still in the planning stages when Ike hit. Coastal geologists, including Anderson, warned at the time that the source of sand — a large underwater shoal off Galveston’s eastern tip — should be preserved for a storm. “it’s a damn good thing he didn’t get his way,” Anderson says.

Patterson’s $13.5 million project now seems like small potatoes. On Tuesday, Galveston mayor Lyda Ann Thomas asked Congress for $100 million, out of a $2.4 billion request, to fund beach nourishment projects on the island. Will Congress balk at spending that kind of money to dump sand on eroding beaches?Would anybody be asking for that money if hugely expensive developments weren’t fronting the beaches?

In other respects, Ike has served as a Deus ex machina, settling long-running arguments overnight. For example, land commissioner Patterson had been locked in a legal dispute with 14 homeowners in Surfside Beach whose homes had been sitting on the public beach. Patterson wanted the houses moved, but the owners sued instead. Ten of those homes are now gone, rendering the lawsuits moot. The storm has also cleared the way for Patterson to introduce more stringent setback rules that would keep new homes out of the dunes and away from the public beaches, at least for a while.

But there’s one factor — not addressed in any of the press coverage I’ve seen — that looms over all of the post-Ike deliberations: climate change. We tend to focus on the instantaneous devastation of hurricanes. But the slow-motion pain that climate-induced rising sea levels will bring to low-lying islands like Galveston is much greater. Much of Galveston, including pretty much all of the West End, is only a few feet above sea level. Recent scientific research has suggested that seas could rise as much as six and a half feet by 2100. Lowball estimates that don’t include melting ice sheets are closer to half a foot to two feet. If the scientists are correct, Galveston’s future is bleak. Now is a teachable moment. Will we seize it?

The Texas Residential Construction Commission defended itself today during a Texas Sunset Advisory Commission hearing. Just last month, the Sunset Commission’s staff made the unusual recommendation that the agency be scrapped because it did “more harm than good” for Texas consumers.

Today, the representatives from the TRCC who testified before lawmakers did all they could to avoid taking blame. The general consensus of the TRCC commissioners was that Texas consumers needed to be more educated about the home building process.

They argued for the survival of the agency and said that HB 1038, which made changes to the agency, needed time to take effect. The legislation was passed in 2005 by Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Beaumont, who also authored the original legislation.

TRCC Commissioner John Krugh, general counsel and VP for Bob Perry Homes, who helped craft the legislation that created TRCC, said he felt the agency was “fair and unbiased” toward consumers.

He said there were a number of misconceptions about the agency such as the idea that TRCC blocks or delays court access. (Arbitration can take up to two years with TRCC before homeowners can pursue their cases in court). “We are light regulation and heavy reconciliation,” he told the Sunset panel.

Commissioner Lewis Brown said he “totally disagreed” with the Sunset staff’s recommendation that the agency be scrapped. He called TRCC the voice of the consumer. “If you take away their voice, then shame on you,” he admonished the legislators.

Rep. Dan Flynn, a member of the Sunset Commission that will help decide if the agency survives, wondered why, if TRCC was fair and unbiased, was there such a disconnect between consumers and the agency?

Krugh remained silent on the issue. The executive director of the agency chimed in. He said consumers were very upset, because they already felt abused and cheated by the builder. Once they start working with TRCC, consumers felt the process was taking too long so they started to believe the agency was on the builder’s side. He also blamed the news media for portraying the agency on the side of home builders.

The “don’t blame us” argument from the agency didn’t sit well with consumers.

Carol Hemphill, a home buyer testified that she had 215 defects in her new home. Hemphill said she contacted TRCC who acknowledged the defects but said they were powerless to do anything about it. Hemphill said no attorney would take her case because construction defect cases were too expensive and took too long to pursue.

Hemphill said a lawyer had told her that “too many roadblocks had been put up by the Legislature to successfully pursue a case for a consumer.” She said she would probably lose her home because there was no way to sell it. “It would cost $25,000 to $50,000 to see it through arbitration,” she said.

It’s difficult to believe in the agency’s independence when wealthy home builder Bob Perry, the state’s largest campaign donor, donated $17,000 to Ritter’s campaign in 2006, the author of TRCC legislation. And when Perry’s VP and general counsel serves as an agency commissioner.

The Sunset Commission will make a recommendation in December on whether the agency should be abolished.

Cemex, the largest concrete company in the United States, won’t be providing any of its concrete to build the controversial 18-foot border wall.

Richard Stana, director of Homeland Security and Justice issues with the Government Accountability Office, told congressional members today that the price of the border-levee wall in Hidalgo County has increased significantly. The increase is due to the rising costs of labor, fuel and concrete.

Stana said the decision by Cemex, a Monterrey, Mexico-based company, not to provide concrete will make building the border wall more expensive. Cemex is the world’s largest supplier of building supplies and it has extensive cement plants in the United States and around the world.

During a House Homeland Security Committee meeting today, Stana explained to the committee that the cement must be brought in from Houston or as far away as Colorado. He didn’t say why Cemex wouldn’t provide the concrete, and phone calls to the company’s offices in Monterrey and Houston were not returned.

“The price of concrete has gone up tremendously,” he told the committee.”Cemex won’t sell to the fencing projects in the United States.”

The controversial 22-mile border-levee wall is currently under construction near Granjeno just west of McAllen. Residents in the area have been vocal about their opposition to building a border wall. They are also opposed to digging up the levees during the height of hurricane season and to the environmental damage the wall will cause.

The original estimate to build the border-levee wall was $113.9 million — $65.7 million of which will be provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Hidalgo County will pay the other $48.2 million. Stana did not say what the increased costs for construction would add up to. Dannenbaum Engineering, which is building the levee-wall, announced in August that instead of finishing the construction in December as planned, it will need until March 2009 to complete the levee-wall.